Work in Adelaide

Few weeks have passed and once again I'm hitting the road. This time I'm going to test the system in Adelaide. It's a small project, safety system for the centrifuge. Then later I'll go into the mine, which is north of Adelaide in the desert, it's called Olympic Dam, one of the biggest mine. But the trip has to wait until sometime in late August, so for that I have time.

sunset from hotel room

But let's go back here. I'm only here for a week and I have a feeling that will be more than enough. There's not that much work to be done, everything is almost complete. And that's good, at least I do not need to stress that something is not working. The customer is also nice, I'm so happy to work here! :)

I've already flown to Adelaide on Sunday night, because they want to start on Monday morning at eight, but whatever. Weekend or not, I had to go. At least it's not that far away, we're landing in a couple of hours. Adelaide is a much smaller city than Perth and Melbourne, I have a hotel in the city center. So I take a rental car and hit the night to look for, where I'm actually staying.

I must say that I am pleasantly surprised with the hotel. Finally, here it looks almost like in Europe. Nice, modern hotel, tall buildings, I'm at 11th floor. I do not know why, but I got a very good room, better that I've requested. I have my own apartment, which means separate bedroom, living room with kitchen, toilet and bathtub. And there is also quite a big terrace. It's a pity that I'm here on business trip only and not as a tourist. Also, I forgot to do some photos of the hotel, next time I'll do better.

Monday morning, I'm off to work. It's just a short drive, a few kilometers. And now, the cool thing, traffic. Here it is really like in a small town. Morning I went through the biggest traffic jam, but I had to really look hard to find it. Completely easy, nice traffic, everything so smooth. Such a small, nice town, I'm really starting to like it here.

At work everything goes according to my expectations. Five days of testing is extremely a lot, well, if all goes according to plan. And it seems that this time everything is as it should be, no major changes have taken place, so just browse through the logic and check if there are any mistakes somewhere. For lunch we have the Australian classic - a sandwich, but one can get used to it after some time.

There are quite a lot of churches in the city, but it is also Australia's standard, as most people here are Christians. And those who are not, are in fact into another religion, and thus we, non-believers, we are actually probably a minority :) After all, that's like that on paper probably everywhere. Right next to the hotel we have a little nice church. I also thought I might to go to have a look there, but somehow I didn't have enough time. It's hard when there's no free weekend to explore the city. I'm the lazy man, after work I rarely want to go somewhere. I planed to go and swim in the hotel pool, but the only thing I could manage was to buy myself a swimwear on the third day and that was all. So maybe next time I can get in to the water.

But last day  I managed to end up at work a little earlier, so I went to the center for a little walk. As always, fascinated with parks and green, my first steps were directed to park with lake along the city center. I started on one side of the golf field and continued along the river how much I could. Golf is a very popular sport here, and apparently it's also a pretty cheap, not like at home. Since everyone plays here, it is not considered to be something unusual, only for the upper class like at home.
But the parks have are really beautiful. Here our amateurs could have learned how the proper city should look like. Everywhere there are sidewalks, grass, trees, birds are flying here and there. Everything is carefully treated and maintained. People come here to unwind, relax or play sports.

In the evening I jumped into the CBD, to see how it looks here. It's only such a short walk. In the evening there were people everywhere, returning home from work. I did a walk around the fountain and then I headed to the pedestrian zone to see if they have something interesting there. I found there only two huge balls and super huge pig which guards wastebasket. Even such they are trying to revive and brighten the pedestrian zone.

I depart on Friday around noon, not early as there was no flight. So on the way to the airport I'm still going to see the nearby beach. But as far as the weather was perfect for the last day , now it turned against me. It's cloudy and lightly drizzling, so the overall effect is marked by weather. What could be a wonderful time along the beach turned into a boring gray walk. So I'm off and go to the airport, since we as a company have access to Qantas lounges. I'd better take a beer before heading home so that flight passes quickly
So this is the end of my short trip, it was not bad, perhaps I'll return here one day again.

All photos can be found on:https://picasaweb.google.com/101430570008874668546/20120601_Adelaide